


Stars

by Kangoo



Series: LGBT Destiny Month 2019 [15]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: LGBT Destiny Month, Light Angst, M/M, The Black Garden Is Its Own Warning, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-15
Updated: 2019-06-15
Packaged: 2020-05-12 14:03:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19230598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo
Summary: The last time Jolyon sees Uldren, it's under the stars





	Stars

**Author's Note:**

> I recommend listening to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xirk18P889U) while reading

The Black Garden is not a place that abides to any rules Jolyon can comprehend. Its landscape unfolds like the long legs of a spider, skittering across his vision, twisting over itself. It only makes sense as long as you’re not looking at it too closely, as long as you ignore what you see in the corner of your eye.

Don’t think about it. Keep moving.

It expends outward and inward at once, stretching as far as the eye can see and then beyond, just outside of your vision, on the edge of your consciousness, like an itch on a limb you don’t have. It pools in his throat, into his chest, in the gaps between his bones. Sticky and dark like blood and tar. It feels as if it is growing inside of him, stretching up out, forcing his body to adjust to the ever-increasing pool in his chest rather than the other way around.

It feels like if he let it, it would push out against his skin until it tears and something terrible would sprout through the cracks. He rubs the ache in his sternum and thinks he feels bumps, thinks about a Cabal skull like the pitted skin of a strawberry, thinks about great viscous things dripping through his veins and wonders what it would feel like if electrical currents had the consistency of molasses.

He dry heaves for what feels like hours. Nothing comes out. He feels it, though, fat and squirming in his throat, clinging to his insides. 

Uldren is running forward, uncaring of what’s taking roots in both of them. He’s gleeful at every new discovery, fascinated by every horrible thing they see. To him, the Black Garden is a playground. He gladly jumps into the Garden, sinks into its depth, stares right at its most terrible secrets.

It stares back.

Jolyon wipes spit off his chin and glances up. They’re underground, he thinks, though he’s not sure there’s an up and down to this place anymore. He can’t see the sky. He’s not sure if there ever was a sky.

He picks up his rifle and follows after Uldren.

What else is there to do? If Jolyon leaves him there, he will never come out again. If he stays—

At least they will get lost together. That’s something.

 

The nights are dark, in the Reef. It’s the deep dark of space, though, not the thick, tangible darkness of the Black Garden. It doesn’t feel heavy. Doesn’t feel alive.

It’s quiet. It took getting out to notice the constant… whispering of the Garden. The distant, incomprehensible chattering of conversations just out of earshot. The trees, maybe, talking to each others. If they could even be called ‘trees’. Now the quiet almost feels like something is missing, the way it feels when you press a bruise and it doesn’t hurt anymore. The expectation of pain, disappointed.

Sometimes he sees Uldren from afar, tilting his head as if to better listen to a very faint sound. Jolyon doesn’t dare ask what he hears. Most days he doesn’t dare to talk to him at all. He doesn’t mean to avoid the prince — he thinks it’s a bit of a mutual effort anyway — but.

He is chasing the very same memories Jolyon is desperate to forget. It’s hard to look at him without remembering… things. Great, terrible, unspeakable things. He has enough of those in mind already, just out of his reach. Waiting for him to lower his guard to swallow him whole like they did with Uldren.

His nightmares have been crowded lately.

That’s why he’s out there now. Breathing in the cold air, staring at the stars. There weren’t any in the Black Garden. There was too much Darkness drowning them out, like static taking over an audio transmission, like ink spreading in water. Light couldn’t last.

Here the stars cover the sky, bright and cold. He feels small in a vast universe, far from the claustrophobic feeling of the Garden. Holds on to the feeling like a drowning man. Some night it’s just him walking the edge of madness, and the stars are the only thing keeping him on the right side.

He’s been seeking those, lately. Small, mundane experiences, the antithesis of everything the Garden was. Open spaces, bright rooms, complete silence and loud, crowded areas. It feels like the Garden emptied him out, took him apart and rebuilt him into something hollow like a beetle shell. 

Since then Jolyon has been rebuilding himself, piece by piece, with everything easy and familiar and known. Enough of secrets. 

He thinks maybe Uldren hasn’t noticed it. Maybe Uldren was already hollow when it found him, and it has slipped through the gaps, filling him with its terrible purpose. Growing its secrets inside of him.

Someone sits next to him. At arm’s length, not close enough to feel body warmth, the movement of displaced air. Anyone wouldn’t have noticed it without looking away from the starlit sky.

It would take more than that for Jolyon to ignore Uldren’s presence. He’s attuned to the rhythm of his breath, the way his body fills an empty space. The Black Garden didn’t take that away. Nothing could.

He doesn’t move when Uldren scoots closer, when his weight settles against Jolyon. He’s heavy and warm like a living thing. Under the night sky he’s briefly rid of the jittery, crazed thing propelling him forward since they got out of the Black Garden. 

Jolyon glances at him, barely moving his head in fear that it would break the moment. Uldren is looking up at the sky. His eyes are like twin stars, bright gold in the dark. 

He opens his mouth to speak — to ask where Uldren has been, what he’s been doing, why he hasn’t had time for him in so long. He doesn’t, though.

There will be time for that later. When the battle against Oryx is over, when the fleet comes back, when Uldren has more time and less of a dazed look on his face whenever his thoughts stray back to the Garden.

When things have gone back to normal, as Jolyon hopes they will. They always come back here, to this place — not the Reef as much as ‘each other’s side’. That’s not something the Black Garden can take away. He hopes it’s not.

In the meantime he closes his mouth and looks back at the stars, grounded in place by the weight of Uldren at his side.


End file.
